Timothy Geithner's term as Treasury Secretary is reaching
its end after four years and numerous scandals that include his 2010 arrest by
the New York Police Department. Geithner
first signaled he was thinking of leaving his post after the debt-ceiling
negotiations that resulted in the Budget Control Act of 2011. In November 2012, rumors abounded that in
response to public pressure Obama would ask Geithner to step down if he won a
second term.

Geithner, however, will remain in his post until the end of
the fiscal-cliff debates that have deadlocked Washington and a new Treasure
Secretary is confirmed. Despite the
multitude of financial scandals that Timothy Geithner has had a central role
in, he will leave his post honorably and with one last indelible mark on yet
another financial crisis. Geithner has
been a central figure in the country's economic recovery since its collapse in
2008.

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His work as President of the Federal Reserve of New York during
the 2008 federal bailout resulted in his 2010 arrest by the NYPD. The disgraced financial giant American
International Group (AIG) sparked public outrage in 2009 for administering $165
million in bonuses to executives from its financial-products group, despite
their role in the bankruptcy of the organization, after accepting a government
bailout. In addition to the $70 billion
allocated to AIG through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Geithner injected AIG
with additional funds from the Federal Reserve in September and November of
2008. By 2009, AIG had collected an
estimated $123.8 billion of taxpayer money.

Geithner was arrested and questioned in 2010 for his role in
encouraging AIG from publicly disclosing payouts to banks involved in credit-default swaps with the insurance giant.
Bloomberg News reported that a series of e-mails between the Federal
Reserve and AIG revealed that the Fed pressured AIG to withhold disclosing
certain information in its filings regarding the use of government funds. The result was a back-door bailout to
numerous financial firms that members of Congress were not informed of. (Geithner's Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps
Disclosures, Bloomberg News, 1/7/2010)

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In January 2009, Geithner was tapped by the newly elected
Obama to serve as Treasury Secretary and play an even more influential role in
the nation's economic recovery, despite the revelation that Geithner had failed
to pay four years' worth of self-employment taxes. Soon after his appointment as Treasury
Secretary, the Treasury Department announced its Public-Private Investment
Partnership (PPIP), Geithner's brainchild, to help remove troubled assets from
banks' balance sheets.

BlackRock Inc. was among the firms named as program managers
of the PPIP. Geithner owes his career as
a public servant to Pete Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, BlackRock
Inc.'s parent company before incorporating independently. Peterson lobbied to have Geithner appointed
to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Geithner returned the favor as President of the NY Federal Reserve by
awarding BlackRock Inc. no-bid contracts to manage JP Morgan Chase's buy-out of
Bear Stearns and the bailout of AIG. The
no-bid contracts drew strong criticism from members of Congress, but Geithner
defended them as a product of the chaos of the economic meltdown.

Geithner's name appeared, once again, in the Libor scandal
that erupted in July 2012, which has been hailed as one of the largest
financial corruption cases in history.
The Financial Times published an article by a former trader that claimed
the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, was being manipulated. The Libor is an average interest rate
calculated by the submission of the interest rates charged by the major banks
in London. It was revealed in the scandal
that banks had been colluding to either inflate or deflate the Libor to profit
from trades. Geithner had been aware of
the Libor manipulation since his days as President of the NY Fed.

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Despite public calls from Congressional leaders to step
down, Geithner will remain at his post through the fiscal-cliff negotiations. His favored replacements appear to be Jack
Lew, Obama's current Chief of Staff, or Erskine Bowles. Bowles was appointed in 2010 to serve as co-chair
of Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, responsible
for identifying measures to improve the country's fiscal situation. He currently leads the Campaign to Fix the
Debt, a non-partisan group of policy makers and business leaders devoted to
finding solutions to the federal-debt crisis.
Bloomberg news has speculated that Geithner will move onto a think-tank
such as the Brookings Institute or may even be tapped to replace Ben Bernanke
as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Abigail W. Adams is a freelance researcher and writer. Her areas of expertise include National Security, Middle Eastern Affairs and the financial industry. She is founder of The Information Collective.